


258. lost in the jungle

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [13]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-13
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-23 17:08:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7472130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of course Helena followed Sarah to the island. What else would she have done? Leave her sister behind?</p>
            </blockquote>





	258. lost in the jungle

**Author's Note:**

> ...and that's all we're getting of Helena's perspective.
> 
> [warnings: blood, gore, well-intentioned but probably not especially hygienic first aid]

Sarah is staring at the phone in her hand, dial tone screaming, when the canoe comes to a stop on the beach.

“Hello, Sarah,” Helena says, and pulls her ungainly way out of the boat. Sarah passed her _what the fuck_ limit at about the time Rachel’s cane hit her face, so she just gives Helena a numb stare and doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t understand how Helena is here. But it doesn’t matter. Here Helena is again, coming into Rachel’s house to find Sarah but coming too late to stop her from bleeding.

Sarah is still holding the phone so tight. There’s blood drying on her hand and it’s cementing the phone in her grip. Oh. Alright, then.

“Sarah,” Helena says again, and she’s so close now, and Sarah doesn’t know when she got here. And Cosima is gone, and the cure is gone, and Susan is dying, and Sarah has a stab wound on her leg, and Cosima is gone, and Kira and Siobhan are hostage, and Helena is here, and the cure is gone, and—

Helena, slowly pulling the phone out of Sarah’s grip. Pulling her to standing. She makes a sad tut-tut noise at the wound on Sarah’s leg, and somehow supports Sarah, limping, all the way to the sea.

“This will hurt,” Helena says, and the sound of bullets firing. And Rachel, and the cane, and Sarah’s brain on fire with hurt, and

the sting of the water, burning. Sarah yells. Distant night birds fly out of the treetops, startled, but: her brain wakes up, takes stock. Shit, it says; you’re hurt pretty bad, Manning. _Yeah_ , Sarah thinks sourly, _I know._

“They got Kira,” she says, “and Mrs. S, they’re in trouble, I—” and she hisses as the saltwater eats at her leg, a toothed and hungry mouth. The hiss is from the pain. It’s also to keep her from saying _you_. As in: _you should have stayed_. As in: _you were supposed to keep them safe, because I couldn’t_. That wouldn’t be fair. Helena shouldn’t be keeping Sarah’s family safe; that’s _Sarah’s_ job, to protect all of them.

Helena, blissfully ignorant of Sarah’s inner thoughts, pulls her out of the ocean and into the canoe. The canoe is still bobbing happily in the low tide and Helena plops Sarah into it unceremoniously and pulls out a first-aid kit.

“Did you _hear_ me?” Sarah says, and Helena doesn’t listen; she just frowns at Sarah’s leg, wraps the bandage around her thigh with expert fingers.

“Yes,” she says, before Sarah can yell anything worse. “But panic will not stop the bleeding of your leg. Your body does not care how you feel. But you have to carry about how your body feels. It is strange, that way.”

She wraps the bandages tight and considers the wound on Sarah’s face. She presses a light thumb to the corner of Sarah’s eye socket; it comes away tacky with blood. Sarah felt herself leaning into the pressure of the touch, but she leans back again.

“Cosima,” Helena says quietly, and Sarah starts crying.

“There’s a boat?” she says, “Susan said – there’s a boat, but – they lost the cure, Kira and Siobhan have a _gun_ pointed at them, Helena—”

Helena hugs her. Says: _shh_. Sarah shakes, and shakes, and shakes.

“Okay,” Helena says, when the shaking has mostly stopped. “Do you know where is this boat.” Sarah shakes her head _no_ , making a small sound as her hair smears in the blood on her face.

“How is this,” Helena says. “You stay here, and call _sestra_ Alison and sheep-mask _sestra_ and tell them that your family is hurt. I will go out and find the boat, and _sestra_ Cosima. Yes?”

Sarah doesn’t say anything. The scales in her head are balancing and unbalancing, awful, Alison’s safety versus Kira, and Kira, and MK, and Kira. And Helena, out there in the woods, wobbling along with her enormous belly. Another set of scales. Cosima on one side, those babies on the other. God. There used to be a time, Sarah thinks, when things weren’t quite this bad. Wasn’t there a time like that?

She swallows. Says: “You call. I go.”

“Sarah,” Helena says lightly, “you will walk ten feet in the woods and fall over again. How will you help _sestra_ Cosima, if you find her?”

“How will _you?_ ” Sarah asks.

Helena lets out a breath through her nose that could be a laugh, if everything wasn’t so terrible. “I lift deer,” she says. “Big heavy deer. Cosima is bird bones, I think.” She goes and lifts herself out of the canoe but before she makes it all the way out Sarah’s hand shoots out, grabs her wrist.

“Don’t go,” she says.

The words hang there. The tide goes in and out. In the lack of moonlight Sarah can’t see the expression on Helena’s face.

“Sarah,” Helena says, and nothing else. She unwraps Sarah’s hand from her wrist. She reaches into the front of the canoe, pulls out something that metal-glints in one bare scrap of moonlight before vanishing up her sleeve. She jumps out of the canoe, and onto the sand.

“Call,” she says. “I will bring your family home safe to you.”

There is something Sarah should say. _I love you_ , because she has never said it. _Thank you_ , or _be safe_ , or just Helena’s name. She owes her that.

She says nothing. Helena heads off into the woods, looking for Sarah’s people that Sarah wasn’t good enough to keep safe. Sarah pulls out her phone, sobs one time, and starts dialing.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


End file.
